2012 Most Popular Stories On Nairobi Wire

2012 In Review

It has been 9 months since nairobiwire.com was launched.. that’s right, 9 months. Time in which this news blog has outgrown itself. Consistently, we have posted interesting news articles every morning with exception of weekends. Unlike other blogs, we avoid filler or junk articles just to drive up traffic, or irritatingly fill readers Facebook and Twitter timelines. Only the best stories are chosen and that can be proven by the hundreds of shares each story receives. Nairobi Wire probably has the highest views to share ratio for any blog or website in Kenya, and that can be attributed to one, the stories themselves and two, the location of the share buttons; designed to float as you read along. Some of the most shared stories include the Saitoti assassination claims by Mutahi Ngunyi, which gained more than 4,000 shares on Facebook, plus hundreds more on Twitter. This social media ‘virality’ quickly transformed it into the week’s most popular post; a position it held for over 4 weeks. It still holds the position of the most read article on Nairobi Wire ever, with over 250,000 reads to date.

The Nigerian prophet’s prophesy about the death of an African president had just been fulfilled in the passing of Malawian leader Bingu wa Mutharika. Despite having the slow start, the article went viral the moment TB Joshua himself shared it on his Facebook fan page. For close to one month, it held the position of the ‘This week most popular article’. It also became the most commented article on Nairobi Wire ever.

Campus Divas For Rich Men, was another hot topic, and this explains why the first article we wrote about it makes it to the top 5 most read articles. Follow up articles about the Facebook page also performed very well.

For the first few months, readers accessing Nairobi Wire via mobile had problems navigating the interface, but that was sorted out the moment we hired an Israeli company to handle our mobile traffic, which is usually in excess of 70% of the total, which is usually anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 on a good day. Different analytics have ranked us among the top 20 most visited sites in the country, just a few months after launching. 2013 can only get better.

Below are some of the most popular articles on Nairobi Wire this year ever.